Letter of the Day (Feb. 24): Tax-exempt NFL

February 21, 2014 - 7:01 PM

The NFL commissioner’s compensation was $44.2 million in 2012. Total league revenue for that year was $9.5 billion. According to a Harvard researcher, 70 percent of the cost of NFL stadiums has been paid for by you and me — that is, taxpayers. Yet the headquarters of the National Football League is chartered as a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization and is treated as such by the IRS. All of this because of a few keywords slipped into legislation 50 years ago. Oh, and did I mention that in order to be awarded a Super Bowl after building your team a new stadium, the league wants to be assured that ticket sales and Super Bowl-related events, hotel rooms, limousines and such be tax-exempt for their members? And let’s not forget what outstanding citizens the members of these teams are. Check your local police blotters this past decade.

Enough already. U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma has been out front in challenging this travesty. We should all be writing our senators and representatives to tell them they should be supporting Coburn’s mission to right this wrong.